


Trapped in Amber

by pinkpines



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-12
Updated: 2016-02-12
Packaged: 2018-05-19 23:07:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5983711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkpines/pseuds/pinkpines
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written to fill an anonymous prompt. Pinefresh and Pinecest sorta? Dippy/Mabel Mabel/Dipper. Status: shit is complicated. This person asked for emotional and sad stuffs so this is what I ran with. This isn’t canon for my Pinefresh AU but it’s actually the saddest angstiest thing I can image could happen to Dippy.</p>
<p>Takes place a couple of years after Weirdmageddon. Life outside the bubble has some interesting side-effects.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trapped in Amber

**Author's Note:**

> I am Dippy trash. You can find my tumblr post for this fic here: http://pinkpines.tumblr.com/post/139178582691/trapped-in-amber

******  
**Where he’s from time doesn’t actually exist. Or, well, it’s more accurate to say that outside of the idea as a construct, it hardly mattered. Time used to be something so insignificant that he never wondered about it at all. He assumed he had an endless amount of unnumbered days there in the technicolor bubble where a brown-eyed girl’s wishes had pulled him from a void of nothingness into the frame of existence. **  
**

Glancing up at the night sky, he enjoys the silence and pushes signature shades to remain propped up above the rim of his hat so he can see the stars more clearly. His neon colored high top clad sneakers pressed flat against the tiled roof. The stars twinkled and seemed to shimmer. They were like pockmarks against the inky indigo hue of the sky. He never bothered to learn the names of any constellations, all except one. Pulling his knees close to his chest he wondered, did the stars in that place look similar? Had he ever noticed them before he existed in the world he was in now?

He couldn’t really remember. He supposed that since he had existed the only star he’d ever really paid much attention to was Mabel.

He had really only spent less than a week in that place, the place where time didn’t matter and his only purpose was to be everything she needed and wanted. Was it weird that Dippy missed it, sometimes? After two years have gone by living in this place called reality, he supposed he probably had no right to be nostalgic for the simplicity that he had known so briefly.

It was nice to see her every day. Everything he was meant to do back then was obvious and what she had wanted him to. Needed him to. She never had to ask. It was a knack he still retained, much to her brother’s annoyance. He supposed since it was her that had willed him to be that it made sense for him to be sensitive and more attune to her heart’s wishes.

Yet, Dipper had managed to convince Mabel to leave the world behind, and somehow, along with Xyler and Craz he’d found himself in this new reality, unsure where exactly he was supposed to go next.

They should have vanished with everything else that had populated that place.

Dippy still didn’t understand why he hadn’t.

He could never really figure that part out. Having a very specific purpose was one thing. Not being quite sure of what you were meant to do anymore was another problem entirely. After all, he’d always defaulted to being there for Mabel, no matter what that meant. It came naturally to him, it never seemed wrong to do.

After all, why else did he exist if it wasn’t for her?

Not really his sister since at best he was a caricature of her brother. His sort of sister but not really his sister because he was thought up and not born into the world together with her.

No, that had been Dipper’s fortunate lot in life.

Not that he was jealous, per se. He had been once, he liked to think that he’d gotten over that. Being jealous wasn’t really his style. It didn’t suit him at all.

But when Dipper had demanded to know what he was up to, if Bill was somehow behind everything- his existing, his innately knowing what Mabel wanted along with her various moods. Dipper’s eyes had glared into his. Dipper’s were darker, a little hint of hazel to the color of his eyes where Dippy’s were clearer and more honeyed. The amber making his eyes look as though they were glowing in certain light.

That’s how he knew this other version of him wasn’t quite so good at letting go of his jealousy, or hiding it for that matter.

Turns out the two of them had something in common, after all.

“Dippy, are you out here?”

He turned around to see Mabel, head sticking out of the door that lead to the roof.

“I was looking for you all over the Shack. How long have you been up here?”

Shrugging he gave her a smile. “Dunno. A while?” He was still bad at time. He was always going to be bad at time. He glanced at the calculator watch on his wrist. Had it been two hours already?

Mabel settled in next to him, stretching her legs out in front of her and pulling the front of her cardigan so the edges overlapped against her chest.

Dippy let his eyes flutter shut for a moment.

He’d been feeling this all summer long, ever since Mabel and Dipper came for their yearly visit to Gravity Falls. It wasn’t possible for Dippy to go back to Piedmont with the twins. How could they ever explain to people that there were suddenly two Dippers? It had been decided it was just best for him to stay at the Shack.

This feeling… this sadness, this nostalgic longing, this guilt that had been buzzing around inside of his brain? That only sparked up in June.

Mabel had a way of feeling everything at once, he noticed. Probably because her heart was so big. Deciphering through the flurry of information that seemed to jolt around inside of him was just par for the course.

He could hear Mabel taking a deep breath, a preparatory measure when she was mustering up the courage to say something.

“You know, you don’t have to feel guilty about any of this, Mabel.”

She was visibly surprised when he beat her to the punch.

“What? What would I feel guilty about?” She sputtered. It was probably one of her most endearing qualities. When she was completely caught off guard, she tended to be a lousy liar.

“Going to college soon, only being able to visit once a year…” Dippy paused, looking her over for a minute and then giving her a smile. “And growing up. None of it’s your fault.”

Mabel looked down at Dippy and he could see she was trying to fight back some tears. The moonlight sometimes made it easier for Dippy to see Mabel how he remembered meeting her, the shorter scrappier girl with a mouth full of braces he fell in love with that summer.

She was older now. At sixteen she was taller, her face a little leaner and not quite as round as it had been when she was 13.

Dippy was exactly the same as the day the prison Bill created for Mabel was destroyed. The day the bubble burst. The day she came back to reality.

He was never going to change. He didn’t age the way the twins did. No one could explain why beyond the fact that he had been born from magic, so his physiology was different somehow. Dippy himself wasn’t interested in the science or the reasons. He had agonized over it already, over the fact that despite what he felt for Mabel he could never stay with her the way he wanted to.

She was going to get older and live her life, and he… wasn’t.

“Dippy I-” there was a hesitation in her voice. “I know this whole thing is weird but, you’ll always be important to me. Even if things were bad back then… I felt lucky.”

“Why?”

“I guess, because even when I was alone back then, I had you. And now somehow I got lucky enough to have two people who are looking out for me and care about me.” Mabel bumped her shoulder with his. “It doesn’t matter how it all happened. I’m just glad that you’re here.”

Cheeks flushing, Dippy rubbed his nose with the back of his hand, obscuring his face from her view while he tried to keep his cool. Okay so, he didn’t know what would happen to him, or if his life was tied to Mabel’s somehow. He would likely never know any answer to his questions until it happened.

However, he was fairly certain that it wouldn’t matter how much time had passed between the day they met and whatever their future held. He was always going to feel like Mabel was the center of his universe. 

She was burning brightly white he was just orbiting around her.

He watched Mabel out of the corner of his eyes. Big grin, straight white teeth and rosy cheeks even in the cover of night.

“Kiss me,” his voice was even, plain, lacking in the usual Dippy Fresh swagger he tended to fall into habitually.

“W-what?”

“You heard me,” he said, smiling crookedly, and Mabel flushed. Dippy could feel it even if he couldn’t see the color rush to her cheeks. He could feel her embarrassment. She wanted to but was surprised at herself for wanting to.

“I...I can’t.”

“Why not? Even though it’s been a while, it’s not like we haven’t done it before.”

Mabel was silent, and Dippy felt the tug of her heart. He knew it was complicated. He knew there was nothing normal about any of this- including the way he felt for her. The way she felt about him. The way she felt about Dipper. The feelings she never told anyone but he could see as plainly as the stars in the sky.

Those weeks they’d spent together holding hands in secret, kissing in the forest, the two of them tethering to each other like they might float away. Those days he fought off her loneliness until Mabel had cried, feeling ashamed of herself, telling him they couldn’t do those things anymore.

He’d never mentioned it at all. Even when Dipper was being a huge blowhard and ragging on him, the temptation had been there, to get in Dipper’s face and tell him he didn’t know a damn thing about Dippy even if they shared a face- and he knew even less about Mabel, even if they’d shared a lifetime together Dippy hadn’t been a part of.

Dipper didn’t know what it was like to hold Mabel the way he had. To kiss her, taste her, to have her fall asleep curled against him while he watched the sunlight shine through the pine trees. Dipper might have been jealous but he had no idea how jealous he truly ought to be.

It was the one thing Dippy had that Dipper didn’t. And it would have been great to throw it in his face, but for some reason it felt even better to keep it hidden, protect it, guard it. It was their secret. It was the one thing that truly separated them on a base level.

He didn’t want to share that with anyone.

“I’m always going to be 13,” he pulled off his hat abruptly, causing his shades to fall against the roof and skid to a stop near his feet unceremoniously. He didn’t even look at them.

It was now or never.

“You’re going to keep growing up, and eventually you’ll grow out of this guilt you feel. You might even forget me one day, and that’s alright, too. I’d just… like to kiss you one last time.”

Before he could say anything else, Mabel’s hand was pressed against his cheek, cold against his skin and her lips were soft like he remembered them being. It was a gentle sweet kiss, and Dippy rested his hand atop the hand she  had placed at her side, fingertips atop the old tiles of the roof. 

Kissing her was always a surreal feeling because all the things she felt during the kiss would appear in rapid-fire in real time into his brain.

Slower, sweeter, deeper, more more more.

Snippets of emotions. Never complete sentences. Just base wants: closer, longing, missing him, missing a time before things were complicated, and a sense of overwhelming loss.

There was that time she wanted to look into his eyes while they were kissing. He remembers it vividly. He opened his obligingly, and when they had locked gazes, she’d breathed against his lips that his eyes were beautiful.

That stuck with him for some reason.

Now, he could feel that she missed him. She was going to miss him. Could feel her sadness, her nostalgia, her love- the conflict that raged inside of her. Mabel’s most precious secret.

When they pulled apart he gave her his freshest grin, not wanting her sympathy, or to feel regret for this thing that had transpired between them.

“I’m always going to be in your corner, Mabel. And it’s because I want to be there. Not because I have to be.”

Reaching for his glasses he put them back on in one fluid motion before popping his hat onto her head, pushing the brim so it obscured her eyes.

“Catch you later.”

Climbing back inside, he shuffled down the ladder and hopped off two steps before reaching the bottom. When he turned he found Dipper standing there with that stupid goatee on his face staring at Dippy blankly, hands dead weight at his sides.

He hadn’t lived a lifetime with Dipper Pines but he could read that stupid look on his face well enough.

Hands slipping into the pockets of his vest, Dippy took a few steps forward, and moving to walk around him.

“She’s all yours dude,” he side stepped the taller version of himself and turned the corner not bothering to look at Dipper’s befuddled expression.


End file.
